CZ- 3D or F75....?

I am getting ready to purchase an F75 or CZ -3D. I primarily hunt for old coins and buttons, but don't mind finding awesome relics. The spots I hit are very old churches and farmhouses. The targets are deep, so I need a machine that can regularly hit in the 8" - 10". I currently run a Vaquero and Safari. The Safari has no problem with depth, but my hunting grounds are littered with iron/ old trash and the Safari doesn't seem to do so hot in these areas as often as I would like. I had a T2 SE that did great in iron, but I just didn't like the machine in general. The Vaquero does an amazing job in iron/trash, but doesn't hit hard enough those older coins in the 8" - 10".

My biggest issue with the CZ 3D is that I keep seeing threads at different sites where people are writing that "some" CZ 3D's are deeper/hotter than others. Is it basically a crap shoot when you buy them as to if you are going to get a "better" working model?

Any and all suggestions, and pros/cons, on either machine are more than welcomed....Thank you in advance.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/14/2013 05:37AM by CousinEddie.

Eddie: I would think (usually gets me in trouble) that if you go the CZ3d route, might want to find one that Tom has calibrated that will go 11-12 inches. He places a sticker on the bottom of them as to when he did the calibration and to what depth he was able to air test it to. I had one he worked on and was labeled 11.9". I sold it to a nice guy down in Aussie to get the CZ6a version which is somewhat water resistant. He's calibrating it now, so we'll see if it does as well as the CZ3d I had. You can purchase one that he hasn't calibrated and send it to him, but he can't make it go any deeper than it's compents limit it to after calibration. I lucked up on the first one. It was one of the older ones with the serial number that begins with 1021. Most of them of this serial number were good deep machines.

You say you have lots of iron/old trash, and the CZ3d (in my opinion) aren't the best in these conditions. They have a tendicy to false on iron/old rusty nails, so you have a learning curve involved in how to identify if what you're hearing is really good or not. They do go deep (the good ones), and the CZ3d can/will identify older 1800's era coins as coins instead of pull tabs which many detectors have a habit of doing. I've never used the 5" hocky puck coil on one, but I've heard very good results in using them in trashy sites, and they are supposed to go nearly as deep as the standard 8" coil. I'd like to pick one up someday just to see what it's all about.

The AT Pro is better at identifying iron trash/nails, but generally not as deep as the CZ's. I have both, and so far, in really trashy sites, I'll use the AT Pro with the small coil, but this could change once I pick up a 5" coil for my converted CZ6a to CZ3d.

For some reason, I prefer the 4 tones of the CZ3d which are...

1. Low tone (for high conductive magnetic objects... iron)
2. Med. Low tone (for low conductive non-magnetic objects... foil, small gold rings)
3. Med. High tone (for medium conductive non-magnetic objects... pulltabs/brass, larger gold rings)
4. High tone (high conductive non-magnetic objects... coins, and really big honker gold rings)

...over a digital scale. I like the analog meter better also. When a digital scale jumps numbers a lot, it confuses me somewhat (not hard to do) as to what it's trying to say is in the ground. On the CZ's, the analog needle will point to one (or maybe once in a while, bounce between two ID signatures) target instead of several numbers that you must interpert. It's not that the digital meter detectors are bad, some are the best I've heard of, it's just that I'm an old man that likes simplicity :-)

The CZ3d is also multi frequency. Most detectors are not, which means it's very capable of using in salt water envirments (ocean beaches). It's very fast in these conditions as you just detect by sound and dig anything in the soft sand that is not iron, with the sometimes exception of really deep iron targets. The CZ3d (as most detectors) have trouble ID'ing really deep targets sometimes, and so utilizes the Low tone for those targets. You can identify them by an iron tone with a weak audio volumn. It pays to check such targets with the depth meter also. It could be a very small piece of iron of shallow depth which will give the same characteristics. ...but again, it (the detector) may be confused/tricked into thinking it's a small shallow target instead of a larger deeper unidentifiable target, so one should probaly dig some of those targets at any site to see what they are. If they all turn out to be small shallow pieces of iron, then you can choose to ignore them if you wish, and let the next guy find the really deep unidentifiable "OMG" target :-) I generally will pass them up after I have found them as small shallow targets until I have gone over the area several times and it seems nothing is left. Pick the easy targets first and then go back for the difficult ones when you have a mind set as to what you're probably going to experience (lots of junk).

There may be better detectors to hunt the areas you mentioned, but I've limited myself to these two detectors for now (CZ3d and AT Pro), so I am unable to advise on the others. I'm sure there are fellows here that can help more so than I.

Best of luck, and try to learn each time you make a mistake :-)

Thank you for the very informative answer. I actually meant to put that I will be getting either the F75 or CZ 3D. Again , the issue has popped up in your reply as to a "good" unit. I'm not really liking the "crap shoot" odds on getting one that isn't a "good" unit and then having to send it out to Tom and spend MORE $$$ to get it tuned to it's fullest capabilities. Kinda' makes no sense. I'll be going the F75 route....

I don't think you will go wrong witht the F75. It's one of Tom's favorite detectors on dry land. You should watch his first video with him using it. Very informing. It's the next best thing to having a pro stand beside you and show you the in's and out's of detecting. I wouldn't mind having one myself, but would have to find someone willing to take my AT Pro in as trade. As it is, the AT Pro is a great second machine for someone wanting to detect with you that doesn't have a detector. They're quiet easy to learn.

Let us know how the F75 does for you.

If you didn't like the T2, you probably won't like the F75. They are pretty much the same machine.

Badger in NH Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If you didn't like the T2, you probably won't like
> the F75. They are pretty much the same machine.

Exactly

and much more EMI issues than a cz too

I second Badgers post....rel the T2 and F75......however Tom has some good writing on using an F75 which may help...personally used several models of the F units and they were noisy if you wanted to get the depth but it seems like a bunch of guys do well with them.

The F75 is a different beast than the T2 SE. Slightly similar, but different. I was able to crank the sensitivity on the T2 SE and get little to no chatter and I know how to eliminate EMI's. The T2 SE didn't perform as well as I thought it would, that's what I didn't like about it. I used an F75 for a few weeks on loan and I really liked it, found a bunch of great stuff. I was going to get one and then I was talked into the T2 SE because it had Boost and Cache Mode, which I never used. I personally don't feel the T2 SE performed better than F75 and I don't feel they are the same machine. I was just curious about the CZ 3D because I primarily hunt for old coins and buttons. I'm no longer interested in the CZ 3D. Thank you for the informative replies.

I am the Aussie connor sold his detector to. I used to own the 1 tone vaquero which i sold.

With the cz3d if you use the discriminator unlike the vaquero you won't lose depth.

I have also owned a few other machines including 1st generation sovereign.

I now own 2 cz3d's and i am sold on the multi frequrncy the system uses.

What you need is something that goes deep, an accurate pin pointer in built,
Multitone And for me multi frequency which makes this a beach machine.

As soon as i started pulling out mower chopped half 1c pieces 7-8" deep i knew i was on a winner.

I have owned a few machines and for about $650 you can't go wrong.

No machine is perfect and will be spending some money getting the
Balance and waterproofing done right.

Be patient and good luck.

Joe

I think both the F75 and T2 are finicky machines. If you have sites where they will work it's great. I love my T2 SE but there are a lot of sites here in NH where it just won't perform well. It can be a very noisy unit in certain areas and there's nothing you can do about it. In those cases I just switch to the Explorer SE.

If you get a site where you can crank the settings to maximum on the T2 SE or F75 SE, they are truly awesome detectors.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/14/2013 11:07PM by Badger in NH.

If you want a new validated/certified F75 SE....... give me a holler (PM).

Thank you Tom, but the purchase has already been made.

Never a problem!